Page 422 - Smarmony Tries, Part 2

Author Notes:

Guest Author’s Note: "Inexperienced GMs usually follow patterns in their mistakes, but that's to be expected. Then, once in a while, they completely blow your mind with something you never thought of."

80 Comments:

I can't believe I made it to one of these first, okay, so tell the forum about a time when a DM, guest or otherwise, threw a complete curve ball at you and your party, mine was when my pops decided to craft an adventure after an episode of Dora, and then actually make her character. She's not half bad.

I think I've mentioned most of the good curveballs already. Still one of the best ones:

My brother ran a game of Toon where the villain found a way that could perminately kill a toon off. Suddenly the game went from silly to a serious race against the clock to save toon town ala "Who Framed Roger Rabbit".

Another fun one was my wizard who had the delusion that his animal familiar was a cursed princess. Turns out he was right and was able to remove the curse.

Once upon a time, there was an elf who was tasked by his kingdom to reach the surrounding capitals and ask for their help. After one goblin siege, a wooden fence blocking the path, and a disgrunted old woodsmen who was paranoid, he came upon a village that was not so desserted. My brother decided to just skip the place, since this kingdom has many inhabbitants that hates non-humans.

He sort of ran into a group of men who were very angry with him, and constantly warned him to leave and never come back. My brother was stubborn and asked if there was a shop willing to sell to him. The conversation lasted for about 10 minutes.

When he was about through with him, he heard a lot of yelling, saying the beast has caught wind of him. He saw a 40ft. shadow in the shaope of this giant bull's head. When the creature came around the building, it turned out to be a giant cow (With horns) and it was pink, with a heart on it side (not the flank, but the gut.)

Between the giant pink cow, an ancient dragon getting a blood deal from him, and being a kingdom where 99% of the population hates non-humans like they are the plague, (In that order, and many more stuff after words) confusion was his annoying friend.

AD&D 2e adventure nearly two decades ago: The DM had a drow break into my room at an inn one night and poison my character (it was radom luck of the draw). I had to get the drow a specific magic item in a nearby dungeon in order to get the antidote or else I'm dead in about 3 days.

The party psionic figured out a way to remove the poison due to a loophole in one of his abilities. So now that we don't have to work for the drow, we went to loot the dungeon for ourselves. XD

I dunno about causing a change of plans, but things sure didn't go according to the story arc's main villain's plans when he tried to get us to open a vault for him. It's a bit of a long-winded story though.

The short version is that it ended up with him stuck in the vault and us finishing the story arc with the entire contents of the vault.

This very much relates to how I have my in-game title. We were suppose to enter into this cursed forest to siege this evil overlord's castle, which was on the other side of this forest, and we had to be railroaed through it. (Can't go around)

My little brother was a little more then annoyed by this, and just flat out said, "OK, the railroad rule this time, is we have to go through the forest anyway we can, correct? Not over, not around, and not under. Only through, correct?"

"Yes."

(No one knew where he was going with this, until he made it VERY clear our only obective was to go through) He said he is going to burn the entire forest down, thus killing the curse. (He was beyond proud to have done one thing no else could, unrail the railroad single handedly, despite dieing later.)

Well, there was the time my party failed to stop what they thought was a bomb from blowing up the moon during the Gala in our ongoing campaign. Ended up derailing the campaign, destroying Canterlot Castle, flattening a town, and releasing Discord early. Though when they decided, in character I might add, to hunt down the moon pieces on their own the story writes itself.

And that's how me expecting them to use the "Use Bigger Rock" spell backfired spectacularly. It was probably the ticking that did it. Whoops. They're still picking up the pieces, but it's turned into a pretty fun story arc.

And because I have to mess up my first comment anywhere, I forgot to mention WHY they're hunting down the moon pieces. Princess Luna went missing when the moon exploded. And one of the players is in her honor guard. Oops. Cue globetrotting adventure!

I've been there as well. It can get frustratingly so, like one time where there was my character had no way to save a hostage from terrorists. My character simply shot the hostage in the head with the idea better off dead than tortured by evil.

And yet the GM wanted to ding me Exp points for that! D:
I was like "You put my character in this situation and he responded with what he thought was the best solution." My character certainly didn't want to be captured/killed either. :/

A GM once had a planned TPK where they had a magic-proof enemy quickly take out everyone but my Wu Jen (slightly more complicated wizard from Complete Arcane). Except my Wu Jen had a ton of points in DEX and was carrying Sai and Shuriken, and it turned out the magic-proof boss was weak to DEX attacks (whihc is why it took out our range first). So the DM had to do a rewrite that it was a magic-proof avatar of the big bad instead, and instead of being saved at the last minute by a "mysterious paladin" (aka NPC who would point us to the next stage) the paladin instead showed up late for humorous dialogue...which then pointed us to the next stage.

What's the best prank you have pulled on someone?
No pranks that sent people to the hospital or worse.
Me: you know that hose that comes with a sink sometimes.
Rubber band on switch, and let someone turn on the knob.

Aww, thanks. I have a loathing of being in hospitals (nothing against the folks who work there. I just have an adversion of the fact there are a lot of ill/dying/dead bodies around me), but I make it a point to go visit people in them because I'm sure a little joy helps the healing process.

I've never been admitted as a patient to a hospital, but I reckon I'd be bored to tears if I were.

Same thing about being admitted. But for the fear thing, I kind of enjoy it there, probably cause I really hope to see the first zombie or something. (I know it can't happen, but I just can't help myself.) Plus if I get sick, they are pretty likely to have what I need.

I'm kind of your opposite on that score, Digo. I find great solace in hospitals, sometimes to the point of creeping other people out. I haven't enjoyed the suffering from either side, but the things I've experienced there as both visitor and patient have been amazing.

(Word of Advice: Everyone on a neurology ward will look at you funny if you start whistling the Scarecrow's song from "The Wizard of Oz". Go figure it's the one place everyone knows that tune.)

Hmm, something that changed the GM's plans huh...well there was the time we were cornered by the City Guard(GM liked to screw with us by getting us caught and have to escape alot) and burned down that 100 year old pud in D&D, never use burning hands on a 100 year old liqueur soaked bartop...burned nicely.

On a side note, thanks to some brainstorming, Trixie Lulamoon is now the lead PC in a homebrewed Supernatural Dieselpunk styled game we are testing.

Trixie is a gun weilding Psychic Investigator who works the mean streets of the great city of Canterlot. She goes up against supernatural monsters, psychic criminals and just plain old thugs. One of the rules was no magic in the game, so all Unicorns are now either Master or Latent psychics, Trixie is a Master Psychic. We also chose not to include the Mane 6(They show up in enough RPGs these days In fact, two of my other projects barely mention them and one of those has Trixie working for Luna). Anyways, Trixie has two NPC office girls, Sugar and Spice(rule 63 snips and snails) who do alot of the research and archiving for her. While the Mane Six arn't mentioned, there is the Council of Three, who try to maintain the balance between the Supernatural and the Mundane. Celsetia, Chrysallis and Discord make up the Council. Right now, only Trixie has been completed and tested, I'm working on the NPC stats for Sugar and Spice as well as some basic thugs and other classes. Just thought I'd drop this here, see what ya'll think.

As of right now, it's just Trixie. I plan on building at least 3 to 4 other characters that can be played right as they are(level 5) and use them as examples of how to build a character for the setting. It is a D20 setting using the rules from Heroes Unlimited. I figure at least two non-psychichs(most likely earth ponies) and at least one pegasus. Luna is a wildcard in the concept, I haven't chosen her place yet. She might end up as a powerful figure in the criminal world, just not sure. If she does, the CMC, now grown(as are Sugar and Spice) might work for her.

It was burnt off with a laser. The reconstructive surgery still hasn't happened yet, and I'm getting a little bit annoyed at the incompetent hospital staff who can't timekeep. Other than that though, total amazeballs.

Sorry, during the weekdays between 7:20-2:50, I use the school computers. I have time during 2 classes, before school, and during lunch to check stuff.

However has the gull to use my name should not do that again, I don't care if it is the 1st of April, I don't celebrate the day (Sorry everypony), and would prefer it if some individuals wouldn't take advantage of it over me.

My curveball is as a GM. Let me preamble the result by saying that one of my players is deeply rooted to the belief of the "Always means no exceptions" thought when it comes to monster entries.

My campaign only has 10 dragons in the entire world. They each rule over a country and have their own personalities. My players are too afraid to go to any of the Chromatic dragon's territories because of the one players warning on how dragons think, despite the fact he hasn't met THESE dragons yet.

Anyway, my players begin in the gold dragon's territory, and she sends them on a quest to find out what is happening with her sisters (They were actually all part of Tiamat once). "Always Alignment" player is going on and on about how the group shouldn't just trust the gold dragon, but they should trust her without question. So while they are at the Bronze Dragon's territory, I show them the big bad of my campaign when the gold dragon shows up, fights and absorbs the Bronze Dragon, and destroys the entire city with an amped Word of Power.

Ian A. Macdonald but nobody can get that right. I've been called: Aen, Eon, Ethan, Ean, and worst of all McDonald. I'm not a restaurant chain, no I don't get free food, stop singing that song. Even autocorrect gets it wrong.

Dangit. My reading qeue is too long as is. Between that & chemistry, I'll never finish my own writings..
Though on that note, at least the Mane6 arr easy/fun enough to align with colors... Azorius for Twilight, Grixis for Rarity, Selesnya for Fluttershy, Naya for Applejack, Rakdos Boggarts for Pinkie, and... hmm. Progenitus for Dash? I can't be the only person fool enough to draft 2-5 decks for each of them...
I look forward to reading your work! And I apologize to any laymen who I baffled with my ramblings.

Unfortunately, our games are usually so circumlocutive a fastball would trip us up. However, the most memorable curve we were ever thrown was the epic battle with the archmage of Evil....only to find out the hapless apprentice we rescued was the actual big bad. >< We won that one by the skin of our teeth.

I threw the dm a curveball by betraying the party for no apparent reason at an extremely inconvenient time. I coup de graced an important npc during a death game. Not my fault that i forgot that she was possessed by a demon that was released into the real world when she died. And i did warn everyone that my 15 year old halfling was a vindictive little punker. the npc really pissed her off.

My brother and I once threw the DM a huge curveball in an old AD&D game. He had this whole plot involving diabolists or something for us, but we also found out that a wyvern that lived nearby was harassing local trade caravans. We figured that seemed more interesting than some lame cult, so off we went.

First, the DM tried to deter us with a giant snake on the way to the wyvern nest. We dealt with that without a scratch - two hit KO, in fact, between a magic missile and a critical hit that I scored. Then we made our way up to its nest and surprised it - my brother was a thief and I was a fighter/thief - and tied up its wings so it couldn't fly. It was still a tough battle, but at the end of the day nobody died.

We got back to town, and the DM had decided to move the plot along. The cultists were attacking the town, and the whole place was on fire! With the help of the town guard (though we let the mean guard captain die), we managed to kill most of them, including the cult leader, but not before they summoned a pit fiend. Mind you, we were still level 1 - the wyvern was worth a lot, but not nearly enough to level up. It was supposed to force us to flee, and getting rid of it would be the focus of a whole campaign arc.

I was having none of that, though. I made my saving throw against the pit fiend's fear aura and brazenly went up to loot the cult leader and the guard captain. Just to add insult to injury, I then took a detour to the weapon shop to loot two magic swords and a magic bow that were too expensive for us to buy earlier. It turned out that a scroll of banishment was among the cult leader's possessions, so we took that to the highest-level NPC cleric in the area and sent that sucker straight back to Hell.

/mlp/ informed me of Dragonfire. (Maybe they aren't such degenerate creeps after all.) Bloody Hasbro. Maybe if we throw enough at them it'll get made after all. I must have watched that 'trailer' dozens of times...